Koi no Yokan
by TakeMeToWonderlandx
Summary: "The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open." - Chuck Palahnuik. Rating/summary to change. Raleigh/OC, eventual Makoleigh.
1. Chapter 1

"We only got one person looking for a roommate, bud. But they're batshit crazy."

The woman behind the desk looked at him with mild irritation. Her name tag read Melinda and Raleigh Becket's face was impassive. He'd dealt with crazy before. Tendo was a mild crazy, more enthusiastic than anything, but they had become close in short time. Crazy was nothing to him. The Jaeger pilot—No, he wasn't a pilot anymore. He worked construction now and he was looking for a place to stay. It wouldn't be home, that was a given. Nothing was home anymore, but anything would have been better than sleeping on dirt. His last housemates were less than hospitable.

"I'll take it." Was his response and the brusque woman's face scrunched. If he knew better, Raleigh would think she pitied him. He didn't care. He wanted a shower. At this rate, cold water would have sufficed. Just something to get the dirt off of his skin and the oil out of his hair. She handed him the key and the papers. After a half-assed signing, she gave a sigh and gestured up the stairs.

The room was at the end of the tight hallway, one of two doors. A rusted '302' was nailed above the peephole and he didn't bother to knock. The key turned with a struggled groan and he eased the door open. Raleigh was met with a heavy silence and he stepped in, the door shutting behind him with a loud 'click'. The room was dimly lit, the small kitchen to his immediate left dark. The living room was vacant, but kept tidy. A small couch, a low-end coffee table, and a small television all that occupied it.

Behind the couch, through a cracked door, he heard the soft sound of a pen dropping. He cleared his throat, a cold feeling of regret creeping up his spine. He knew quiet. The drift had been a comfortable silence, for what he allowed himself to remember, but this was different. His brow furrowed and shuffling continued beyond the door, followed by heavy thumping. He stepped further in the living room and dropped his bag near the coffee table.

"Hello, I'm Raleigh…Raleigh Becket," he says and stays by the table, not wanting to spook whatever dwelled inside the darkened room. "Heard you were looking for a roommate, thought I'd take the offer."

The thumping lightened and neared the door. Raleigh flexed his body instinctively and when the door opened, he wasn't sure if he breathed a sigh of relief or a gasp of surprise. The woman leaned heavily on a cane and her face clearly read signs of discomfort.

He was unsure.

Should he help her? Or would that be insulting? His hands rested at his sides and gripped his belt.

Her shoulder hit the door frame and she grunted. One eye looked to him, a shade of mint green. The other was closed in a harsh wink. Slim braids peeked out from unruly auburn hair that fell well past her thin shoulders. She looked faintly surprised and straightened as best as she could when she finally registered that he was in the room.

"Oh Christ, I'm sorry," she finally said, lips twisting into a frown. "I wasn't actually looking for a roommate."

Raleigh's face fell and she was quick to notice. The woman moved and used the back of the couch to brace herself. Her hand flapped about in a panic.

"Shit, that sounded bad. No, no. It's just…," she trailed and pulled at the seams of the couch. "Miranda thinks I need a roommate. Someone to keep an eye on me, y'know? Because well…"

She gestured to her cane with a dainty hand and a light smile on her lips. The cane was becoming an object of curiosity to him. She didn't look older than twenty-five. Raleigh's lips twitched and she looked expectant. He finally smiled and she relaxed.

"What's it for?" His voice finally found him and he spoke what was on his mind.

"I've got brittle bones. It sucks. Didn't get enough milk as I child I 'spose."

Her words were light, but her cane was heavy as she came to stand before him. Raleigh had a few inches on her. She expected him to look her over, but his eyes stayed on her face. Her face was bright and clear, even with the signs of insomnia pulling at her eyes. He was familiar with that. His eyes flickered to the hand on her cane, noted the slight shake.

"But anyway, you're welcome to stay, Raleigh," she says and offers him her free hand. "I'll clean and all, but I'm a god awful cook."

Raleigh took her hand, felt the cool skin against his warmth, and gave it a light shake. He had to be careful with her. He knew how to do that. The ranger had learned all about being careful. Jaeger pilots were to be careful. Take precautions. Measure the outcomes, weigh the options. Come to terms with failures.

_Yeah, _he thought, _like you came to terms with Yancy, huh?_

"I can try cooking. You haven't told me your name yet." He forces out, bringing himself back to Earth from the depths of the sea. He had still been holding her hand and she was looking at where they were joined with a raised brow. Her hand found itself at her side and his found its way into his pocket.

"True. " She admits with an almost shy smile. "Name's Elaine MacGyver. Can call me Ellie if you want. Or Mac. Haven't been called that in awhile."

She hobbled past him and pushed open the only other door in the room. A pale finger beckoned him to join her. A light switch flicked on, illuminating the shadowed room.

"This'll be your room. I've been kind of using it as storage."

There was nothing in the living room and the walls were bare. Raleigh was skeptical.

"Oh."

The word passed his lips unnoticed. Oil paintings covered every expanse of wall. Not a single inch of flowery wallpaper peaked through. A small desk and bed had escaped the painted paper, seemingly untouched. The stale smell of dried paint made his nose twitch and he stepped in even further. Some paintings stood alone. Others formed elaborate pieces. The pieces on the ceiling caught his eye. Stars collided against one another amidst a kaleidoscope galaxy, but there was no destruction. It was interesting to say the least. The blinds were closed on the lone window in the room, but he could make out the faint twinkle of starlight. He wanted to sleep and the single bed whispered to him, but Elaine hovered near like a quiet ghost. If he spoke too loud, she might disappear in a wisp of red hair.

"Do you sell them?"

"No," she answers shortly and this takes him aback. "Art doesn't have much of a place in the world anymore. The Kaiju are to thank for that."

The Kaiju were to thank for a long list of things. For his family being torn apart, for the scars that lined his body like angry trails. They had brought the world together, sure, but they had taken away more than they had given. His teeth grit and he sat unceremoniously on the edge of the bed. She hummed and pulled out the chair from under the desk. The pain in her face as she settled onto the hard wood unsettled Raleigh, but he made no notion of it.

"I've tried to sell them. I really have. Melinda sometimes buys them off me, but out of pity I suspect." Her voice was hushed, but the venom was still there. The former pilot leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees.

"But my creations are nothing compared to Jaegers or giant beasts," she hums and meets his eyes. "Mine don't level cities or save people. Mine tell stories of other worlds and people whose faces we might never know."

Was this what Melinda meant by 'crazy'? A part of him wanted to listen, but the other weighed down on his shoulders and fogged his brain. Elaine had a pleasant, quiet voice that strummed him along. His hands rubbed at his face and Elaine stood up from her seat with shaky legs.

"Well, Raleigh, I hope this is okay. I can clear out the pictures if you wa-".

"No," he cuts her off, raising a hand. "I like 'em. Sometimes those stars out there get a little old."

Elaine giggled, snorted unpleasantly, and then managed a full-bellied laugh. The woman shook her head, her hair falling into her pale face. Raleigh blinked once, twice. He had missed the joke. She wiped at her eyes and made her way out the door. She turned back to him and smiled again, flashing white teeth.

"That's because you're looking at the dead and they're looking back at you. Goodnight, Raleigh. Sleep well."

She waved, flicked the light off, and shut the door behind her. He listened to the falls of her cane grow distant, and then he let out a ragged breath.

"What the hell was that?"

He questioned the paintings and they offered no reprieve. Trying to wrap his head around what just happened proved too much and a dull pain throbbed in his temples. He tore his coat off his frame and pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, now dry and stinking of sweat. His nose scrunched and he swore. His bag was still in the living room.

A tap came to his door.

"I left your bag by your door. Don't carry much do you?" She was met with silence. "Didn't want to come in, in case you're naked or something. If you sleep naked, that's totally okay."

The laughter in her voice was mischievous and his skin reddened. Here he was, thinking she was this shy cripple, but she was already making lewd comments. The sound of her door closing roused him. He shook his head and cracked his door, bringing the bag in and setting it at the foot of his bed. The bed squeaked under his weight once more and he fell back against the sheets, hands cradling the back of his head.

Blue eyes looked to the moonlight paintings. A painting of a girl overlooking a mountain from cloud tops. Another of a crescent moon cradling a newborn. One beside the bathroom door captured the image of a frail woman in a bathtub, just under the water's surface. Her eyes were open and aware, but her face was placid. Accepting.

_Ophelia, _he thought.An old story he had read.

Raleigh closed his eyes, hearing Elaine's voice in his head again.

'_That's because you're looking at the dead and they're looking back at you.'_

He looked back up to the ceiling, to the bright lines of the stars and the swirls of nebulae. The stars were entwined, not crashing like he had thought. Their 'limbs', he felt safe to call them, were entwined like holy lovers. Elaine had a talent and it showcased itself across the landscape of these four walls.

She wasn't crazy, not like what Miranda had said. Raleigh's lips drew lazily into a smile.

Elaine MacGyver was lonely.


	2. Chapter 2

The two strangers kept a quiet existence for the first two weeks. Raleigh was curious though. Elaine would leave her room only to eat. Granted, he was gone most of the day and dinners were late. He didn't know how she spent her days. There wasn't much she _could _do, he often found himself thinking. The guilty afterthoughts were unremorseful.

There was a time where he was an afterthought. Just a hotheaded nobody with only one somebody at his side. Being in a Jaeger had changed everything. When he stepped into Gipsy, felt his synapses and neurons coursing with electricity followed by the quiet calm as he became one with brother and machine… He had had steel heart and steel skin. He had been unbreakable.

The scars that lined his frame burned.

He sat at the couch with his plate resting on his lap. His 'meal' consisted of cold noodles and green beans. A dry roll sat on top of the cold noodles and he frowned at it. The door behind him eased open and she 'thumped' her way in. She moved past him and grabbed her plate from the counter, smelling of inks and paints. Lines of paint streaked up her bare arms and small clumps dangled from her hair like ornaments.

"Getting crazy in there?" A ghost of a smile twitched at his lips and he followed her with his eyes. Elaine snorted and eased next to him. The cane dropped to the floor and her plate came to rest on the tops of her thighs. His eyes found the blank television and he stared at it. Elaine prodded at the noodles with slim fingers. They painted a morose portrait. He, the tired warrior. She, the fragile artist.

"I have to keep up with demand," she finally said and looked to him from the corner of her eye. "Not all of us can make a living working on the wall."

She stabbed at her noodles with the plastic fork and shoved them into her mouth. The dim light caught her hair like sparks from fading embers.

"People still buy art?"

He had meant it as a general inquiry, but the way she tensed made his stomach roil.

"Yes," she drug out the 's', seething. "Surprising isn't it? But you know what they all want?"

"No, I don't." His jaw tightened and he turned to face her, bumping knees. Her green eyes were bright and raging when she turned to look at him. There was an angry heat and he couldn't help but ease away, so as to not be caught in her blaze.

"All anyone ever wants are Kaiju. They want Onibaba or Trespasser. Even Knifehead. Why Knifehead? Like this one guy, some doctor. All he ever asks for is Yamarashi!"

Raleigh's fork scraped against the plate and he cleared his throat. He waited for it. He tapped his foot and waited for her eyes to light up with recognition. She had to know who he was, who his brother was. Wherever Knifehead was mentioned, Gipsy Danger's name was soon to follow. Jaegers and their pilots were world renowned. They made movie stars monotonous beings of the past.

_Even the failures, _he rages in silence.

Nothing came. Her face scrunched and her small body moved with effort at her inhale. In the last week, he had never seen her so expressive. Between her quiet aloofness and morbid statements, he didn't think there would be room for anger. The Ranger eased up and nibbled at his green beans.

"Why do people want pictures of…of doom harbingers!?"

Elaine was calm. Goofy. Introverted. All that being said, yet there she had been, flailing about like a kite to overtly aggressive wind.

"No one wants art of the Jaegers?"

He couldn't help but ask. Her hands stopped by her face. If he listened hard enough, he swore he could have heard the clicking of her mechanisms as her head turned.

"Yeah, they do. Sometimes."

"Well," he said and cleared his throat. "That can't be so bad."

She had relaxed and he sighed with relief. The last thing he wanted was a worked up redhead with a cane. Elaine, waving her cane in battle armor, was much more amusing than he believed it to be. Her eyes narrowed in response to his loud chuckle.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said with a shake of his head and shoved more noodles into this mouth. "You're funny when you get all flappy armed."

Elaine guffawed and Raleigh found the sound a comfort. He couldn't help but laugh with her. The laughter was light and true. The laughter took him back to a time where his mother told stories with her shadow and his father acted as her backup. His heart felt heavy with the reminder, but the girl's laughter coaxed him out of the darkened corners of memories. Ellie slapped gently at his thigh and braced herself, tears brimming in the corner of her jadeite eyes.

Elaine calmed herself and she glowed with joy. She hadn't felt as content in that moment as she had in years. The darkness of her apartment and the tubs of paint in her room was all she had known for the past years of her life. Her existence was coated in the aroma of wet paint and the weight of a vacant heart. The weight hung in her chest like a benign tumor, offering nothing yet remaining harbored inside her.

She ducked her head and smiled, feeling a bolt of anxiety.

'_Chin up, little soldier', _her father would have said. _'You have to see the places you're going.'_

Raleigh settled back into the couch and closed his eyes, tipping his head back. A sharp inhale caught Ellie's attention and her eyes slid over to observe him. He was dirty from his shift at the wall, smears of dirt and oil along the sun-kissed column of his throat. Ash peppered his ears and the blond of his hair. She smiled and felt like a girl again. Not an artist, not a lonely hermit, but a girl. A young girl that was weak at the knees for a boy.

Raleigh breathed raw strength. She saw it in the way the veins in his forearms twined along the muscle like veins to a tree. That odd swagger he had, the one where he gripped his belt like he owned the ground, was confident. He was such a different image compared to the waif that she was. When she caught his attention with simple questions, he snapped his head to look at her like a soldier to attention.

Like a soldier.

"What happened to you?"

The question left her lips barely above a whisper, no more than a beating of a butterfly wing.

"How do you mean?" His eyes fluttered open. The ex-pilot looked to the redhead with mild concern and she held his gaze despite the erratic shuffle her heart tapped in her ribcage.

"Were you a soldier before being on the wall?"

He sighed as he sat up and moved the plate onto the coffee table. His fingers threaded through his hair and he considered the question. He had been a soldier…hadn't he? A soldier fighting a war against monsters in the body of an iron titan. He had done his time in the Ranger academy, under the tutelage of Marshall Stacker Pentecost. Such a bitter old man, but Raleigh would have never uttered the words. There wasn't a way to measure the utmost respect he held for the man. Stacker had given him and his brother a new life that was far away from the world of bar fights and deceptive women.

"A type of soldier, yeah. I was a Ranger."

Ellie fixed him with sharp eyes and he stiffened. Now, he figured, was the time the questions would come.

She did not fail him.

"Did you...," she paused and contemplated her next words, nibbling at her bottom lip. "Did you pilot a Jaeger?"

"I did," he admitted with a short nod. "I did with my brother Yancy."

Raleigh did not feel discomfort at the admission, he found. The guys he had roomed with before never gave the slightest damn over what Raleigh had done before stepping foot on the wall. They only cared for their rations and the women that warmed their beds. Raleigh didn't even let that thought cross his mind. He worked when necessary, ate when necessary, and ended the day with a drink and his head on the pillow.

"Ah, I see. My pop worked on 'em. Designs and all that. Maybe he designed y'alls."

She chortled and stood up, leaving him perplexed. Her hand grasped the plate and the other lifted the cane. She brought it down and the rubbery end caught on her foot. She shrieked, a harsh and eardrum rattling sound, at the painful stretch of her skin. Her body tottered forward and the plate fell. The Ranger shot up and caught her under the arms, pulling her against the solid expanse of his chest. She shuddered, whether it was from his heat or the pain in her foot she didn't quite know.

"You alright, Ellie?"

_Ellie, _she snapped at herself. _Get it together. Barely even know him. Oh hell, but that didn't stop you from asking if he slept naked._

Her pale face warmed with hot blood and she sucked her lips in, a showing of nervous habit that she developed as a child. His heart beat through his thin shirt and thumped against her back. Her shaking hand scrambled for the cane and she righted herself. His hands moved along her back to her shoulders and kept her steady. Elaine felt that nervous tremble in her veins and she took a step forward to duck down and take the fallen plate in hand once again.

_Oh thank god_, she thought. _Nothing spilled. That would have been mortifying_.

He grabbed his plate and stepped into the dim kitchen. Elaine watched him in silence then followed. Her gaze walked his arm when he nudged the sink to life with his forearm and chilled water came grumbling reluctantly through the pipe work.

"You're a gentleman, Raleigh, and I'm fine. Thank you." She reassured him with a smile as she stepped in line with him. Her shoulder touched his and pushed against him. His brow quirked in questioning and he looked down at her. A hand came to his hip and the other braced against the counter.

He pursed his lips and looked at her incredulously. What was she playing at?

"You got a problem?"

"Let me clean," she said indignantly. "You smell like an oil spill, so go clean yourself. I got this."

From experience with his mother, he knew better than to question a woman in her own kitchen. Even then, that did nothing to stop him.

"You think I smell?"

"Just like rusty ass." She laughed again and pushed him from the sink with gentle shoves. Raleigh cracked a cheeky grin and did as she said. Before he took a step into his room, he was stopped by her faint voice again.

"I think we'll get along just fine, Becks."

When he turned back to look at her she wasn't looking at him, her eyes downcast to the soapy water and their dirty utensils. Her auburn hair was high up in a bun and tendrils, decorated with specks of dried paint, framed her face. The doorknob creaked as he gripped it with unrelenting force. He couldn't recall the last time he had made a friend, even an acquaintance.

Maybe, just maybe…

"Yeah…" he trailed and that got her attention, green eyes flickering up to meld with blue. "I'm...I'm inclined to agree, Mac."

* * *

A/N: Hello guys! I'm going to be writing this as short little scenes between Elaine and Raleigh. I may flesh it out at a later date, but anyhow. I'm taking some AU liberties with the story seeing as how I haven't read the novelization. (Liberties in that Raleigh is sharing an apartment and all that.) I'm working on this without a beta, so if there are mistakes I missed, I'm super sorry. I hope you all like it so far and please leave reviews!


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